GROUP: Bay Area Video Coalition- Teen Digital Camp (BAVC)

The Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) is a San Francisco non-profit that has been training youth and adults in  digital media creation for over 30 years. Their programs for youth in video, audio, animation and FX have been acclaimed and supported by national funders. BAVC youth alumni have gone on to pursue their passion for making media at CalArts, NYU, Juilliard and won awards for their work around the world.

This summer, the San Francisco Bay Area non-profit will be holding three 5 day long bootcamps just for teens, ages 14-18.
These hands-on sessions will immerse you in a solid understanding of the basics, show you how to have fun with digital tools, give you an overview of how the pros work, and help you hone the skills you need to be creative in a competitive field.

Digital Media Camps are five days long, Monday – Friday, 9:30am – 4:30pm, (except for two video camps, which are 5.5 days long with a Saturday screening) and include an hour for lunch (provided!). Your instructors are experienced experts with hundreds of teaching hours under their belts. You’ll be part of a team but will have an opportunity to ask questions and get personal time with your instructors too.

BEYOND YOUTUBE: ADVANCED NONFICTION STORYTELLING
Mon. June 4 – Fri. June 8, Saturday screening June 9
Using professional-level HD cameras, a fully-outfitted lighting studio, sound recording booths and field audio equipment as well as advanced editing workstations, you’ll get a crash course in how to effectively tell your story about your life and community, indie-style. Learn storyboarding and shot-listing, shooting and interview techniques, production dos and don’ts, directing, sound recording, how to ingest your media into the edit station and editing with Final Cut Pro 7. On the Saturday following camp, your work will be screened publicly and you’ll have the opportunity to conduct a Q & A with the audience. You’ll also receive a DVD with all the completed work from the camp on it and your piece will be broadcast on San Francisco’s Cable Public Access television channels. If your work is exceptional, it may be distributed by BAVC in national film festivals around the country.

GO VIRAL: LEARN HOW TO MAKE A MUSIC VIDEO
Mon. August 13 – Fri. August 17, Saturday screening August 18
You’ll discover the short experimental format of music videos at this camp and come away with a solid understanding about how aesthetics and storytelling can combine to create a memorable music video. We’ve tapped local musicians to contribute some of their best music for you to produce and cut to. You and your classmates will crew together, using all professional video and audio gear and then edit to the beat in state-of-the-art edit suites using Final Cut Pro 7. On the Saturday following camp, your work will be screened publicly and you’ll have the opportunity to conduct a Q & A with the audience. You’ll also receive a DVD with all the completed work from the camp on it and your piece will be broadcast on San Francisco’s Cable Public Access television channels. If your work is exceptional, it may be distributed by BAVC in national film festivals around the country.

MOGRAPH MAGIC: VISUAL FX
Mon. July 9 – Fri. July 13
Building creatures, making a hot dog dance, warping text to a beat, creating a motion blur, crumbling a pyramid, adding smoke across a lake, transforming a tank into a robot and then blowing it up…if being able to do all this sounds like fun, you may want to become a motion graphics artist. Even if you’re not sure, this bootcamp will introduce you to conceptualizing, creating and moving a graphic image along a timeline. You’ll watch examples of award-winning motion graphic design and begin to pick out “how they did that.” Working mostly in Adobe CS5 After Effects, you learn to composite layers of QuickTime movies, video and animation. You’ll create titles and effects using filters and masking. You’ll leave after five days with 3 solid examples for your portfolio or reel, and time permitting, you’ll get an overview of Adobe Flash and Apple Motion 5.

To find out more about these camps (and the many other programs of the BAVC) visit http://www.bavc.org

(and currently they have 40% off all classes!)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 Adam Gertsacov is the co-founder and co-organizer of Digital Family Summit.  He wears many hats, including those of a professional clown, an author and publisher, an artist/educator, a non-profit administrator, a P.T. Barnum impersonator, a flea circus impresario, and the esteemed hat of the Clown Laureate of Greenbelt, Maryland.